For target tracking, automatic target recognition and detection applications, they value edge detection sensibility, precision and location accuracy rather than other criterions. Aimed at these three criterions, this paper presents an edge detection algorithm based on matched filter. Firstly, a matched filter was designed by analyzing the edge model for natural image, then the edge response was computed using the designed matched filter; secondly, the lower and discontinuous filtered responses were further suppressed using a dedicated one-dimension filter; finally, the edge image was obtained by binarizing the edge response with a local adaptive threshold. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed algorithm has more improvement than the Sobel and Canny operators in detection sensibility, precision and location accuracy. Moreover, the algorithm can be implemented with parallel pipeline using FPGA, so it is also rather suitable for real-time applications.